San Juan Island: We See Orcas From Our Campsite

Marysville, WA--We're back on the mainland. Here are some shots of some of what happened during the last week. If you have any questions, just ask.

The sun seldom shone, but it only rained once in the 10 days we were on our bikes. San Juan Island has some steep hills and a little more traffic than Lopez. The scenery was beautiful...including seeing a pod of orcas one evening. No pictures...they were pretty far out in the water. One kayaker camped nearby, however, was right out there among them.

Every campground out here has a designated shared campsite for hikers, bikers, and kayakers. The cost is something like 5 bucks per person. What this means is that, even if the campground is full, no "hiker-biker" finds himself SOL. Such was the case for us at San Juan County Park. All the sites were reserved, but we used the hiker/biker campsite.

We rode to the campground using the northern route across the island by way of Roche Harbor. Roche Harbor is so picturesque you could call it Disneyland for Millionaires because of all the yachts. We rode back to Friday Harbor using the southern route past the lighthouse at Lime Kiln. Here we bought ferry tickets to Sidney, B.C. The ferry didn't get into Sidney until after suppertime so we spent the night there.

The ferry system is used to bikes. They have tie-downs for them and lots of bikes make the trips. The real neat thing is that for inter-island travel (not to Sidney) the ferry is FREE to pedestrians and bikers...so once you get to an island you could spend all summer going back and forth FREE as long as you don't have a vehicle.